Quick Facts
--Pounds of grain needed to produce enough meat and other animal products to feed a person on a meat-based diet for a year: 2,000.
--Pounds of grain needed to feed a person for a year if the grain is eaten directly: 400.
--Percentage of:
Soybean crops grown to feed livestock in the US: 90%
Corn crops grown to feed livestock in the US: 80%
All grains grown to feed livestock in the US: 70%
--Livestock production accounts for 70% of all agriculture land and 30% of the surface of the planet. (UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Livestock’s Long Shadow, 2006)
--Number of additional people who could be fed if all grain grown in the US for livestock was used to feed people: 800 million (David Pimentel, Professor of Entomology, Cornell University.)
--Amount of meat consumed by the average person worldwide 50 years ago: 45 pounds; today: 90.3 pounds.
--Amount of water needed to produce one pound of beef: approx. 1581 gallons
Amount of water needed to produce one pound of wheat: 102 gallons
(A.Y. Hoekstra and A.K. Chapagain, “Water Footprints of Nations,” 2006)
--Percentage of overall greenhouse gas emissions:
Due to animal agriculture: 51%
Due to vehicles (cars, trucks, trains, planes etc.): 13%
(World Watch / World Bank report) http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climate%20Change.pdf
--Percentage of nitrous oxide* generated by livestock: 65% (* Nitrous Oxide has nearly 300 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.) (UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Livestock’s Long Shadow, 2006)
--Percentage of methane* generated by livestock: 37% (* Methane has 23 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.) (UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Livestock’s Long Shadow, 2006)
--The average American diet produces more than 15 pounds of CO2 per day, which equals 5,600 pounds of CO2 emissions per person per year.
--A vegan diet results in eliminating 1.5 tons of CO2 emissions annually, or eight pounds per day, when compared with a non-vegan diet (Eshel G. and Martin P., Energy and Global Warming, 2006).
If everyone in the U.S. ate no meat for one day a week, it would be the equivalent of taking 5 million cars off the road.
Eat Carbon Conscious:
- Meat-Centered Diet = SUV
- Vegetarian = mid-sized car
- Vegan = biking or walking
(Geophysicists Gidon Eshel & Pamela Martin from the University of Chicago, 2006.)
Water Saved By a Plant-Based Diet
- Per Day*--
- Meat-Centered Diet = 4,000 gallons of water
- Vegetarian = 1,200 gallons of water
- Vegan = 300 gallons of water
- 2,500 gallons of water yields--
- 100 pounds of potatoes
- 50 pounds of fruit
- 1 pound of meat
(Presentation to the American Association For the Advancement of Science, G. Borgstrom.)
If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the US would save:
- 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months
- 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year
- 70 million gallons of gas, enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare
- 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware
If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the US would prevent:
- Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France
- 3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damages
- 4.5 million tons of animal excrement
- Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions
(Physicist Noam Mohr, New York University Polytechnic Institute.) |
